French Interior Minister says suspected synagogue attacker was Algerian and wasn’t flagged as a suspected extremist.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region aims to create a buffer zone but has no plans to capture the city. Speaking to reporters Friday on a visit to Harbin, China, Putin said that Moscow has launched attacks in the Kharkiv region in response to the Ukrainian shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region. Russian authorities say a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea has caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol and set a refinery ablaze in southern Russia. Friday's drone raids marked Kyiv’s attempt to strike back during Russia’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine.

US military says first aid shipment has been driven across a newly built US pier into the Ga…

France’s Interior Minister says that a man who was shot and killed by police after a suspected arson attack on a synagogue in the Normandy city of Rouen was an Algerian national who’d sought medical treatment in France and wasn’t flagged as a suspected extremist. The minister praised the 25-year-old police officer who shot and killed the man. The minister said that he would be decorated for his “extremely courageous, extremely professional” behavior faced with the suspected attacker who rushed at him with a kitchen knife early Friday after the blaze broke out at the synagogue.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is concluding a two-day visit to China by emphasizing the countries' strategic ties as well as his own personal relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as they seek to present an alternative to U.S. global influence. Putin made a back-handed rebuke for the U.S., and others who oppose the Moscow-Beijing relationship, saying an “emerging multipolar world ... is now taking shape before our eyes.” Putin praised their bilateral trade as he toured a China-Russia Expo in the northeastern city of Harbin and met students at the Harbin Institute of Technology, which is said to work closely with the People’s Liberation Army. Harbin was once home to many Russian expatriates and retains some of that history.

Wall Street is calm before the opening day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly cleared the 40,000 mark for the first time. Futures for the Dow and the S&P 500 were unchanged early Friday and had plenty of room to hang on to what’s been a strong week for stocks. Meme stocks continued to give back their massive gains from Monday and Tuesday, with video game retailer GameStop falling 17% in premarket and movie chain AMC Entertainment declining 7.8%. Elsewhere, Chinese stocks reversed earlier losses following the announcement of fresh measures to revive the ailing property market.